Purpose: The doctoral thesis analyses the role of self-citations in the process of scientific communication and the evaluation of scientific work; this was completed from the perspective of self-citation patterns in different systems in order to monitor the impact of citations and the interrelation of self-citations with other indicators. Methods: The research was conducted on Slovenian scientific production in the WoS and Scopus collections in the 25-year period from 1996-2020 for researchers from the SICRIS system and their publications from the COBISS system (more than 65,000 publications for more than 11,000 authors). To compare self-citation patterns in WoS, Scopus and COBISS as well as the relationship of self-citations with citations in terms of temporal evolution, aging, co-authorship and journal impact factors by document and individual levels for different citation windows (1 to 10 years), self-citations were determined on the basis of different author identifiers instead of author names. Results: The self-citation patterns of Slovenian researchers in the WoS and Scopus collections are very similar and do not affect the ranking of researchers by repercussions in these collections within any of the disciplines. Significant differences are found in the humanities field due to the increased coverage of local journals in the Scopus collection, resulting in 3% more self-citations per document / researcher. The influence of researchers' self-citations on the citations of their scientific work diminishes over time, but it also decreases with the journal impact factor and greater collaboration. However, significant differences were found in citation data in the COBISS system which, due to insufficient data on authors, show 8% more citations for almost half of the researchers than in the WoS and Scopus collections. Conclusion: Self-citations are a natural part of the process of scientific communication and do not reduce citation (impact) of researchers and their scientific work. The self-citation patterns of Slovenian researchers do not differ significantly from the self-citation patterns of researchers in other environments. The results can be used as a reference for further research on self-citations in the WoS and Scopus collections and to supplement the bibliographies of researchers in the COBISS system in assessing the impact of research work.
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